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Sidelined: U.S. fails for the second time in Quartet discussions on ‘Jewish state’

While the Diplomatic Quartet scrambled to avert action on Palestine at the Security Council, the Obama administration was reportedly busy lobbying to commit the Quartet to affirming Israel’s Jewish character.  That the Quartet statement’s purpose was not achieved and that the Obama administration’s efforts failed further highlights the death of the Oslo era and the decreasing relevance of the U.S. in a fast changing Middle East.   

The weak Quartet statement only proposed a timeline for more negotiations, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) didn’t find anything in the statement that might coax them to talk with an Israeli government continuing to colonize Palestinian land.  The UN bid by the PA further sidelines a Quartet whose envoy is strongly biased against the Palestinians. 

And the Obama administration’s failure to turn the Quartet into even more of a biased mediator marks the second time they have failed to do so; Daniel Levy first reported for Foreign Policy that the U.S. tried to get the Quartet to state that Israel was the “homeland of the Jewish people” for the first time in July. (See this excellent piece in Mondoweiss—originally in the Journal of Palestine Studies—explaining why Palestinians can’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.) The U.S. failure to get the Quartet to agree to sign on to Israel’s new condition that the Palestinians become Zionists surely marks a new, and low, era for U.S.-brokered negotiations.

Jonathan Cook correctly writes in the National that the whole Palestinian bid for statehood represents a death knell for the U.S. role in Israel/Palestine: 

If Mahmoud Abbas, the long-suffering head of the Palestinian Authority, has  achieved anything for his people at the UN, it is not imminent statehood but the  fatal discrediting of the US as arbiter of a Middle East peace. US President  Barack Obama’s promised veto on a Palestinian state declares the demise not only  of the Oslo process but also of the US role as an honest broker. 

The Palestinian statehood bid is fast making the U.S., who has spent decades as Israel’s lawyer, irrelevant. No one is crying over the loss.  

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http://blogs.ft.com/the-a-list/2011/09/27/israels-false-friends-on-the-us-right/#axzz1Z2fFuQG6

Or take Governor Rick Perry who lately has used every opportunity available, to denounce president Obama’s Middle East policy as some sort of betrayal of the Jewish state. This new-found vocalisation comes hard on Mr Perry’s response to a question about the potential for the Taliban to secure Pakistani nuclear weapons that consisted of comments so inanely incoherent that by comparison they made Sarah Palin look like Henry Kissinger.

Republican efforts to paint themselves as the party of authentic, unwavering support for Israel – coupled with unfounded attacks on the president´s pro-Israel record – are certain to damage Israel´s cause among Democrats and liberal American voters. Should Mr Obama win a second term in office next year, Israel may yet rue the current Republican rhetoric.

If the US is out, then all of their sponsored proposals and agreements are out too. If the US has been “discredited as arbiter” – than all of the concessions made by Palestinians should also be discredited. I think what I am really saying here is, dissolve the Palestinian “government.” The struggle is for rights, lets hear from our brothers and sisters in the occupied territories, Gaza and the Palestinian diaspora.

Obama should have worn his Israeli Badge of Honorand his star of David pin in the Security Council meeting. He is trying desperately to become the first “Jewish President of the US. his talking points will be: 1. Veto the Palestinians Application for Statehood. He must obey Netanyahu. 2. Support keeping Palestinians “on a diet” as Netanyahu likes to say, and Obama wants the chocolate and cokes to be recalled since the Palestinians had the audacity to go to the UN. 3. Allow aid ships to be attacked at will, even if US citizens may be executed on board by the Israeli soldiers.
4. He is aware that the Veto may jeopardize American soldiers in the Middle East, by turning the Arab street against all Americans, but in return he will get the Jewish vote and APAC funding. 5. He wants the world to know that occupation of another’s land is not wrong. In fact, using the Israeli’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Obama wants the US history books to be rewritten, so that any country or people who fought against being occupied and for freedom and diginity in WWII will now be labeled “terrorists”. That will make it legitimate for the Israelis to occupy whatever countries they want.
6. He will forbid his children from playing the song “Ain’t no place for a hero” in the White House. If asked he will tell them that honor and integrity can be bought and sold, and that they are highly overated. 6. He will show Americans that he really isn’t a Muslim by trying his best to keep them down, and who will criticize him for being the First Jewish President wannabe of the United States of America.

RE: “The UN bid by the PA further sidelines a Quartet whose envoy [Tony Blair] is strongly biased against the Palestinians.” ~ Kane

MY COMMENT: The Palestinians need their own St. Patrick to drive out snakes like Tony Blair. It is way past time for Blair to find someone else to whore himself out to. And I do mean whore!

SEE: Tony Blair criticised for ‘Israeli bias’ ~ By Ian Black & Seumas Milne, guardian.co.uk, 9/26/11

Tony Blair, envoy of the Middle East quartet, was attacked by Palestinian officials for being biased in favour of Israeli security needs and seeming “to advocate an apartheid-like approach to dealing with the occupied West Bank”, the Palestine papers reveal.
The former PM, appointed to the job in Sept. 2007, made the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem his base for efforts to boost the West Bank economy and improve Palestinian governance – key strands of the overall western strategy of backing the Palestinian Authority and shunning Hamas during negotiations with Israel…

ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/26/tony-blair-criticised-israeli-bias-envoy

ALSO SEE: Spotlight on Blair peace envoy role over Gaddafi and JPMorgan linkhttp://www.smh.com.au/world/spotlight-on-blair-peace-envoy-role-over-gaddafi-and-jpmorgan-link-20110926-1ktkw.html

AND SEE: Blair the envoy ‘pushed deals worth billions’ for investment bank that pays him £2m a yearhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2041832/Tony-Blair-pushed-deals-worth-billions-investment-bank-JP-Morgan.html

Finally! It only took 60 yrs for the world to see through he laughable myth of the US “honest sobroker” image. As all of us here on Mondo know, the US is the anti honest broker, the main culprit of the failed peace process, the corrupt and bias police force in ME, Israel’s thuggish enforcers, Israel’s source of illegal nuclear arms, the number one supporter and enabler of Israeli war crimes, ….should I go on?